I got my Anova just before Xmas and love it!! Been experimenting with some of the recipes on the web and sometimes don’t get quite the expected result, Up until now I haven’t been pre-heating the water before putting in the food and suspect this could be the problem? Should the water always be pre-heated?
@BrianDD You don’t have necessarily pre-heat water, but then the recipe time has to be adjusted. There is no known rule how exactly, especially for any time-sensitive recipes. For long-running (12-steak, or something like that) adding half hour or so would be enough and shouldn’t change the result. If we are talking about any recipe which measures time under couple hours, then there are too many factors to just guess the correct adjustment.
Thanks. That makes sense. I’ll try a few recipes with pre-heated water and see how I go compared to my initial results
Preheating the water before dropping the food in makes sense, when the food is already at room temperature. I suppose, that the cooking times in the recipes allow for the food to come up to the water temperature and stay there for enough time to be safe and cooked through.
But what if the food is just out of the freezer? Could you put the food into the cold water and let both come up to cooking temperature together? You wouldn’t start the timer then, until the water came up to cooking temperature. I tried this with a frozen cod fillet yesterday, and, after an hour and a half, at the cooking temp. it tasted fine.
Ooops! I cooked the fish for 45 minutes, after it came up to temperature.
I don’t start with cold water and have the circulator bring it to target temp. I fill it with hot water from the tap. That means I don’t have to have the circulator heat the water as much to reach target and I can start cooking quicker. For some cooks I actually start the cook with the water above target and the circulator then doesn’t start heating till the temp drops to target.